Mrs Williams at the Graveside
by QTArbuthnot
Summary: Amy visiting Rory's grave. I DO NOT OWN ANY PART OF DOCTOR WHO.
1. Chapter 1

She stood there a long time, unbowed by the years, but holding herself steady with a horn-handled walking stick. The funeral had been a week ago: she hadn't realised how many friends they had – all prepared to stand out in the driving December rain to honour a good man. She was here now, on her own, to see the headstone which, in a way, was the reason they'd come to live here, all those years ago. She remembered...

They'd been about to leave, when he'd called her back, to come and look at it a gravestone for someone with the same name as his own. She turned, only to see him vanish before her eyes. She'd had no choice. She had to follow, though it had been the hardest decision of her life to leave everything she knew, everybody (but one) that she loved, knowing that she'd never see them ever again. And then the two of them were together again, their previous life forever inaccessible and an unknown new life before them – no more adventuring, just the one adventure that everyone knows: that of not knowing what tomorrow may bring.

They'd made a good life for themselves, here in Manhattan. They'd scraped enough money together to make a few investments, which had turned out to be much wiser than their friends and advisors had thought they would be. Their 'luck' held and they had become moderately wealthy, though not wealthy enough to draw unwelcome attention to themselves.

...and now it was over. He lay underneath the stone that had brought him here. She read the words inscribed upon it once more:

IN LOVING MEMORY

RORY ARTHUR WILLIAMS

AGED 82

'Aged 82' she thought. Well that's what they'd told everybody. The fact was that they didn't really know any more, what with one thing and another, but 82 seemed about right for the age of their bodies.

She thought she would have some more words added to the stone when her time came. She'd mention it to Anthony. She already had a job for him to do after she'd gone – probably quite a while after she'd gone, so getting a few words put on a headstone would be just one more task for him. He was a good boy: they'd all been good; her boys.

As she turned to leave, the evening light on the stone reminded her of Welsh slate.

She did a double take: "Hey Stupid-face, we never went and waved at ourselves in Cwmtaff. Do you think we get another go? It wouldn't be the first time."


	2. Chapter 2

It's November 1994: four years since he died, and she's visiting again. She doesn't visit as often as she used to, nor as often as she would wish. She's 87 now, and doesn't have the energy to travel to the cemetery very often. But it's the anniversary of his death today, so she made the effort.

She's not able to stand for long these days, so she's sitting on a 'shooting stick' – a walking stick with a handle that opens out as a canvas seat – Anthony brought it back for her from a holiday in Scotland. He'd wanted to see where his parents came from, but she'd told him to stay away from Leadworth for the time being to avoid complications. She wanted him to pay a visit to his grandfather there in 2012, but it wouldn't be safe to go before then. So he'd gone to Scotland instead. A keen golfer, it was no hardship for him to visit the home of the sport, and play the tourist in between rounds. He'd returned with the usual tourist tat – a tartan tam o' shanter that suited him about as much as that dreadful fez had suited the Doctor, a plushie 'haggis' for his daughter (his marriage had ended somewhat less than amicably a few years back, but he does his best to keep in touch with his only child, who is sixteen now and has much the same sense of discipline and social responsibility as her aunt had had at her age), a bagpipe chanter he had singularly failed to get a decent note out of, and so on – but the shooting stick was a godsend, enabling her to rest where there was nowhere to sit, such as Rory's graveside. In truth, there isn't really anywhere else she goes nowadays – the places she'd frequented with Rory had lost their lustre, and now held only bittersweet memories for her.

She sits there a long time and, unusually for someone her age is listening to a personal stereo through headphones, oblivious to everything but the music and her own thoughts. It's playing the same song over and over again, something this model shouldn't be able to do.

As she had done in another life – she shouldn't be able to remember Lallapalooza (or whatever it was called) because the version of her that survived there alone for thirty-odd years wasn't part of the timeline that led to her present self, but somehow (as Rory had found with his plastic Roman life) the memories were there if she searched for them (as she'd once complained to the Doctor, her life didn't make any sense, even after all this time) – she'd built a sonic device. The Doctor had a screwdriver, the other Amy had a probe, but she, due to the size limitations of mid-to-late twentieth century components had built her device into the carcase of an old vacuum cleaner – so Rory had dubbed it her 'sonic Hoover'. Although not as portable as the other models she'd still found uses for it (she had the only TV set in America that could pick up British television broadcasts – she'd been watching Channel 4's 'Brookside' from its beginning in 1984, and she still hadn't seen anything she remembered from her childhood, though of course, back in what she and Rory had always referred to as 'Real Life' (as if fifty-odd years in Manhattan was just some sort of distraction) she was still only five years old (and a dedicated fan of 'Rosie and Jim' on CITV, which she also watched, to the amusement of her son). One use she'd put it to had been to jigger her portable CD player to play track six of this album (_A mí me gusta) _on a continuous loop – it wasn't quite the right version, because that wouldn't be released for another year or more, but it was appropriate, and this version was called the 'River Re-mix' which she found amusing.

It's getting cold now, so she collapses her seat back into a walking stick and goes to look for a taxi home. As always, she wonders if this is the last time she'll be leaving.


End file.
